Monday, July 25, 2011
Grand Ballroom, 5th fl (Sheraton New Orleans)
Butanol and higher alcohols are used as a solvent and plasticizer in the plastic industry. These compounds are also one of the several attractive alternative fuels for gasoline. Butanol has been considered as a potential fuel because it has several advantageous characteristics, including high energy density, phase stability on blending with gasoline and non-corrosiveness. These higher alcohols can be produced by genus Clostridia in nature. Clostridium acetobutylicum is one of the best known butanol producers, although acetone and ethanol are also coproduced through the solventogenesis. Gene involved in the acids producing pathway in C. acetobutylicum was metabolically engineered to increase butanol production. Mutants on acetic and butyric acids pathway have been constructed from C. acetobutylicum ATCC 824 and characterized. [This work was supported by the Advanced Biomass R&D Center of Korea (ABC-2010-0029799) through the Global Frontier Research Program of the Ministry of Education, Science and Technology (MEST). Further support by GS Caltex, BioFuelChem, EEWS program of KAIST, and the World Class University program (R32-2008-000-10142-0) of the MEST are appreciated.].